A Call to Arms

Thank you to everyone for your comments and kind words, thank you for thinking of me, when you all have so many other things and more important worries of you own. Thank you.

After whats been a devastating weekend, one of me crying and not leaving the house and hardly getting dressed, yesterday I wrote an email to my RE asking why it is I have to carry this dead thing inside me until next week.

To clarify, at the appointment last Friday, he was not even a little encouraging, and his exact words were “Its very likely this pregnancy will end in a miscarriage” said “I’m sorry” and left the room.

It seems my email upset him. Last night he called by me and my husband and said “It’s not dead, you must finish all the medications until next week, and the chances are poor, but you still have a 30% chance of hearing a heartbeat next Friday and the pregnancy being viable. We did find a fetal pole but it was not clearly visible so we were unable to measure it, it may have been too small to show a heartbeat. Your gestational sac is about on target, and the yolk sack if perfectly placed and visible. It’s just too soon to call it.”
Which brings me to what I am about to ask from you now. Please send my little goldfish good vibes, to please grow, prayers if you believe in them, positive thoughts and I guess hope. I don’t know what the outcome will be and it may all be for nothing, however this embryo has been a fighter, and I hope it’s just a little slow and runty, that it hangs in there and continues to fight.
Thank you in advance, the support of the last few days has meant the world to me.
Jeanette

 

 

 

Conversations with a Crazy Person

It’s Tuesday night. 6dpt. I started getting anxious to test today. Really anxious and I had to go to Target so that made it worse. I had to get some cleaning supplies, and some vinegar, and some other stuff for my friend’s birthday party that I am helping her with. I wandered by the pregnancy test kit aisle. Put a box of 3 in my cart and then proceeded to have the stupidest conversation with myself for the next 20 minutes while meandering around Target.

“You promised you were not going to test early”

I know but I can’t help it, I’m getting really anxious today.

“You PROMISED! Look at how crappy it’s turned out for you the other 2 times?”

I know but this feels different.

“It could just be the progesterone. It’s probably just the progesterone”

Yes. Possibly. Fine. God you’re an ass.

I remove the tests from my cart somewhere around kids toys. I then wander over to the baby section. The section of Target I always have avoided. I think for a minute, what it would be like to actually BE pregnant and be able to justifiably buy these items. I move on to another aisle.

The conversation continues:

“No you are not buying those! I’m not kidding. NO!”

Ok but the results aren’t going to change if I test early or not.

“No but you will wreck this peaceful happiness bubble of insulation you’ve worked so hard to create around yourself if you test early. Look how well you did at acupuncture yesterday. You didn’t whine or cry or act like a maniac. For Once.”

“You’re 11 days into all the meds, you are doing well. Don’t ruin it”

Always fighting between the logical and possibly insane me.

Navel Gazing

We all have “stuff” right? The things that we believe define us, the things we have gone through, endured, survived, or inherently believe. I can’t speak for anyone but myself when I talk about my “comfort zone” because its unique to me. Isn’t it?

The dictionary defines a “comfort zone” as: a situation or place in which a person feels secure, comfortable, or in control. People talk about their comfort zone abstractly. As though using that phrase clarifies for us what they are and are not able to tolerate.

What is your comfort zone?

Mine is a bunch of self concepts, wife, step-mother, daughter, sister, adult child of abusive parents, insomniac, audiophile, reader, technology geek; whatever. My world prizes critical thinking as its highest output.

Name it, diagnose it, put a label on it, put it in its box and put it away. If I name it, then I can understand it, and if I understand it then I can fix it. The funny part of this therapeutic model is that I presume I will end up some place different from the mess where I began. So much for critical thinking.

Reflection helps, for a while, because it’s the start of self-inquiry, but too much of it further conceals who I am by providing me with more self-concepts. Labels for notions of what I am and what I’m not. From these labels I construct what is my comfort zone. The walls of this zone are the limitations I set for myself. The beliefs I hold inviolable, the ground I will not bridge, the “no-ways” and the “not in this lifetimes”. I pad the inside of this cell with familiar habits, preferences and patterns. “Its just the way I am, so get used to it”

In truth, my “comfort zone” is anything but comfortable. There is no room to turn around in it, no room for anything new, for forgiveness, or redemption, or kindness or compassion. There is barely room to breathe.

As a kid I had one of those “mummy” sleeping bags. It was warm, but I couldn’t move, or turn over, or rest comfortably without getting all tangled in it. Yet I’ve held on to these old methods of coping, even though they no longer useful.

For me the process of IVF has meant that I really have to look at myself, and what motivates me. If I am truthful I spent a long time thinking I wasn’t good enough to be someones mother. I really wanted to be, but I didn’t trust myself to do or be better than my upbringing.

Its meant bring brave, and relentlessly facing the future, no matter what the outcome is. It’s also meant coming to terms with my past. You have to think positively during IVF or there is no chance of it working. Its more than just physiology. You have to be willing to hope. Whats funny about that is, I punish myself for hoping. Vulnerability is not my strong suit, yet here I am posting some of the most personal stuff ever all over the internet.

What I really want is to be able to shed this “skin”, and start over with something new, that’s tender and vulnerable. To quote Lilly Tomlin “Forgiveness means giving up all hope of a better past”

I got the call yesterday that my goldfish was fertilized. I will get another call on day 5 and they will let me know if it makes to blastocyst. Each time I’ve done this, I am surprised at how much I want those cells to keep splitting. I think its time to give myself permission to hope.